Xbox One Getting New Social Features, USB Support, and More

Just before the Xbox Gamescom conference kicked off, Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb posted a laundry list of new features coming to Xbox One to his blog, including new streaming capabilities and support for some well-known formats.

First, the Xbox One is finally getting a media player that will play music and other media files from an attached supported USB drive OR from a DLNA-supported home music network. The Xbox One Media Player is said to support all of the same file formats as Xbox 360 as well as "dozens of new file formats like mpeg 2 TS, animated gifs and mkv which will be added by the end of the year."

A major update is coming to the Friends section of the Xbox One interface, which will "enables users to see at a glance what’s going on with their friends," according to the blog. "They can stay up-to-date with their current activities, the most popular games their friends are playing, and a Gamerscore leaderboard to see who has improved their Gamerscore over the last 30 days"

Elsewhere on the system, the Snap feature is adding support for messages, friends lists, parties, and more, which will allow for seamless social management without having to leave a game. Also, the update will allow us to stream TV to SmartGlass, allowing us to watch TV on our tablets throughout the house.

There's a lot of cool things coming that will make Xbox One a more complete system. What are you looking forward to most?